When
Barack Obama was elected president of the US, it was supposed to be the
end of the bad old days of George W. Bush. But in Somalia, the 'war on
terror' continues.

March this
year saw the start of a new US operation in support of the transitional
government in Somalia.

According
to the New York Times, American advisors had spent the last several
months training Somali forces to be deployed in the offensive against
factions of the Union of Islamic Courts movement, and the US had
provided 'covert training to Somali intelligence officers, logistical
support to the peacekeepers, fuel for the maneuvers, surveillance
information about insurgent positions and money for bullets and guns'.

This was
something of a covert operation from the US point of view. A US
official, who told the paper 'what you're likely to see is air strikes
and Special Ops moving in, hitting and getting out', said he was not
allowed to speak publicly about it.

The Somali
government, however, was happy to boast of US involvement. General
Mohamed Gelle Kahiye, the new chief of staff of the armed forces, said
of a military surveillance plane overhead, 'It's the Americans. They're
helping us.'

On 2 May,
explosions in a mosque in Mogadishu's Bakara market, a stronghold of the
US-targeted Al Shabaab group, killed 45 people and triggered fighting
between a pro-government militia and Al Shabaab and Hizbal al Islam,
both factions of the Union of Islamic Courts movement. It's not clear
who actually set off the explosions, but it is beginning to seem that
Somalia could be the US Africa Command's (AFRICOM) first overt war.

The Obama
administration's 2011 budget request for security assistance programmes
in Africa includes $38 million for arms sales to African states, $21
million for training African officers and $24 million for anti-terrorism
programmes. This is in addition to the 40 tones of arms and ammunition
supplied to the Somali transitional government in 2009, and military aid
to Ethiopia, which fronted for the US in the fight against the Union of
Islamic Courts in 2006. AFRICOM has now taken over US security
assistance programmes with Mali, Niger, Chad and Senegal, and the
Defense Department is now considering forming a 1,000-strong marine
rapid deployment force for Africa. Although AFRICOM gives the impression
it is not a combat force, it looks as if this may change.

The
justification for US involvement in Somalia is 'Islamic extremism'. Al
Shabaab is on the US list of terrorist organizations as a supposed part
of al-Qaeda. On 14 March, General William ('Kip') Ward, commander of
AFRICOM, singled out Somalia in testimony before the Senate Armed
Services Committee as the east African country most 'threatened by
terrorists', while Senator Carl Levin stated that 'al Qaeda and violent
extremists who share their ideology are not just located in the
Afghanistan-Pakistan region but in places like Somalia, Mali, Nigeria
and Niger'. Kip Ward also spoke of support for the Somali government,
which is being fought against by radical Islamist groups, as a
responsibility that the US has to take up. This means that there is no
separation between the US-UK presence in Afghanistan and AFRICOM's
operations in Somalia and other parts of Africa.

Writing in
the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on 10 March, the last ambassador of the
United States to Somalia (1994-95), Daniel H. Simpson, posed the
question 'Why, apart from the only lightly documented charge of Islamic
extremism among the Shabaab, is the United States reengaging in Somalia
at this time?' He provided the answer himself: 'Part of the reason is
because the United States has its only base in Africa up the coast from
Mogadishu, in Djibouti, the former French Somaliland. The US Africa
Command was established there in 2008, and, absent the willingness of
other African countries to host it, the base in Djibouti became the
headquarters for US troops and fighter bombers in Africa.'

AFRICOM,
responsible for US military operations for the whole of the African
continent except Egypt, was established in October 2008, but the idea
goes back to the beginning of the decade, when the US National
Intelligence Council estimated that the US will buy 25 per cent of its
oil from Africa by 2015. Oil and natural gas seems to always sit nicely
with this so-called war on terror.

The case
of Somalia epitomizes the proxy war situation in Africa and also smashes
some of the myths around why African countries are in the situation they
are. It's sometimes argued that the different languages and tribes in
many African countries are the cause of their problems. However, Somalia
is one country with one language and one dominant religion, so by that
reasoning it should have more internal harmony than its neighbors. The
explanation for its problems lies in the history of colonialism and
exploitation by Western powers. The breakdown of national cohesion in
Somalia and the civil war in 1988, since when the country has been
ungovernable from Mogadishu, was caused by its use in the Cold War and
specifically by President Siyad Barre's decision to seek alliances with
the US and apartheid South Africa against Soviet Union-backed Ethiopia.
Subsequent international interventions, like the UN force in 1992 and
the Ethiopian US-backed invasion in 2006 have been more about occupation
than mediation.

The US
proxy war in Africa is a mechanism to re-colonize the continent and
extend the boundaries of the war on terror. It's time to mobilize
against it. To support the campaign against AFRICOM and the proxy
situation in Africa, check the Sons and daughters of Africa Movement
Facebook page, coordinated in Europe by Agnes Munyi-Vanselow and Explo
Nani-Kofi of KILOMBO - Campaigning Against Proxy War Situation in Africa
and AFRICOM. The latter is affiliated with the Stop the War Coalition in
the UK.

This
article was originally published by Counterfire. Explo Nani-Kofi is
coordinator of KILOMBO - Centre for Civil Society and African
Self-Determination as well as editor of the Kilombo Pan-African
Community Journal.